1. Field of the Invention
The embodiments relate to a workflow processing apparatus that processes a file obtained over a network according to a workflow, a processing method therefor, and a computer program product for performing the method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Document delivery systems that cause an image input apparatus such as a scanner apparatus or a multifunction peripheral (MFP) to coordinate with an information processing apparatus such as a server to thereby digitize and/or deliver paper documents efficiently have been provided and come into widespread use.
As an example of such a system, a document delivery system including an MFP and a delivery server is disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2008-097586. In this document delivery system, the delivery server associates received bibliographic data with workflow (hereinafter, sometimes referred to as “flow”) definition data and controls one or more operations which can be image conversion, e-mail delivery, delivery-to-folder, and the like on scanned image data based on the flow definition data associated with the bibliographic data, thereby implementing a document delivery workflow according to the received bibliographic data.
Providing such a document delivery system can lead to efficient processing. However, constructing this system requires not only an addition of a delivery server but also a premise that the image input apparatus such as an MFP should support this system. More specifically, it is necessary for the image input apparatus to be capable of communicating with the delivery server and selecting a predetermined document delivery workflow and to have a scanner-purpose application to provide scanned image data to the document delivery workflow so that the image input apparatus can utilize a document delivery function provided by the delivery server.
In view of the circumstance, proposed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2010-238218 is a system that permits utilizing the document delivery function even when a special application is not installed. This system includes an image processing apparatus that corresponds to the delivery server in the above description. When image data is obtained from an image input apparatus and stored in a predetermined folder (monitoring folder) on a file system, the image processing apparatus detects that the image data is newly stored in the folder. This is because the predetermined folder is monitored as to whether image data is newly stored in the predetermined folder by polling. The image processing apparatus determines whether the image data is image data from a valid delivery source. When determining that the image data is from a valid delivery source, the image processing apparatus performs image conversion, e-mail delivery, delivery-to-folder, and/or the like using a preset delivery workflow.
Thus, an operator is required just simply to transmit image data to a storage location of a monitoring subject associated with desired flow definition data; in response thereto, the image processing apparatus can detect that the image data is newly stored in the storage location and perform operations according to the desired flow definition data on the image data.
The conventional image processing apparatus can perform operations according to preset desired flow definition data. However, the image processing apparatus cannot dynamically change the flow definition data to perform operations according to the changed flow definition data. Put another way, the conventional image processing apparatus cannot change flow definition data according to information about a kind, a name, and/or the like of data to be delivered by accessing the information.
As a method for dynamically changing a delivery workflow, additional information can be embedded in data to be delivered. This addition can be performed by extending the data and embedding a barcode in the data, for example. However, this method disadvantageously presents difficulty to a user in implementing the method because the extension of data is not easy.
As a method that does not involve the extension of data, can be used a method of causing a document to be delivered to have a cover page that includes optical mark recognition (OMR) or a barcode. However, this method is disadvantageously troublesome because the OMR or the barcode is of a special form for easy recognition and therefore requires use of special means for the recognition each time when necessity arises.